In the 1940s, British hopes for victory in motor racing were placed in the BRM (British Racing Motors) project. But the results were so bad that Tony Vandervell stepped aside and created his own team using modified versions of Ferrari cars with the name “Thinwall Special”.
Tony Vandervell subsequently consolidated a team to compete in Formula 1. The name Vanwall arises from the combination of the owner's name “Vandervell” and the most profitable product of its companies, the thinwall bearings.
The first cars built by Vanwall were named Vanwall Specials and met the regulatory requirements of the 1954 Formula 1. The chassis was conceived by Owen Maddock and built by the company “Cooper Car Company”.
The first Vanwall car featured a Cooper supplied chassis and a four-cylinder engine designed by engineer Leo Kuzmicki. For 1955 they presented a new version of the engine with 2,490 cm3 displacement and fuel injection. The impeller reached a power of 285 hp.
The same engine served to equip the new 1956 Vanwall, now with a new chassis designed by a talented young engineer named Colin Chapman (who would revolutionize the history of F1 in the 1970s). This car wore a new aerodynamically evolved body designed by Frank Costin. Vanwall was making progress on the tracks. For 1957 Chapman introduced a new rear suspension scheme.
The car designed by Chapman was really good. In 1956 Stirling Moss won a non-scoring race for the F1 at Silverstone. Moss was the lead driver of the Vanwall team in 1957, accompanied by Tony Brooks and Stuart Lewis-Evans as teammates.
In 1957 Moss won the British Grand Prix, making it a historical fact: it was the first international victory of an English driver aboard a car of his own nationality. That same year the driver Stirling Moss won two more F1 races in Italy. That was Tony Vandervell's great wish: to beat Italian cars on their own territory.
In the 1958 season Vanwall defeated Ferrari and consolidated himself as the first winner in the history of the “Constructors Cup”. Although their drivers Moss and Brooks won three Grand Prix each, they finished second and third in the Drivers Championship. The champion was Mike Hawthorn aboard a Ferrari Dino 246.
Vanwall's end was anticipated after his best moment due to problems in Vandervell's health. While the team continued to compete for two more years, efforts were not necessary to return to the level achieved in 1958.
© Adrián Blanco 2006 — Prohibited the total or partial reproduction of text and/or images without explicit written consent of the author. —
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